Denver Broncos fans wait for their team to arrive at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Jersey City, N.J., on Sunday. / Jim O'Connor/USA Today

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Super Bowl banners

None were put up along the streets of the host city, East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Acknowledgement

The mayor of East Rutherford has yet to receive an invitation to the game.

The site

If it were truly a New York Super Bowl, everyone would be gathering in Buffalo.

Festivities

Thanks for the spectacle,

New York, but the only lasting memory will be of the game.

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It’s obvious why the Super Bowl is a New York event and not a New Jersey happening, but before we present that oh-so-easy slam-dunk case, let’s first examine New Jersey itself.

New Jersey is an outdated concept. As a state it doesn’t need to exist.

Start with the fact that there’s no such thing as a “New Jersey metropolitan area.” Close to 20 million people live in the New York metropolitan area — and that area includes New Jersey’s six largest cities.

About 400,000 workers commute every day to New York from New Jersey, which means that without New York’s largesse of high-paying jobs, the Garden State’s economy would be on a par with Greece. Putting it another way, New York is the land of Oz, while New Jersey is where the Munchkins live.

Practically speaking, the northern half of New Jersey should be annexed to New York and the rest of it absorbed by Pennsylvania.

If MetLife Stadium didn’t exist, there would be nothing left in those parts except for clogged interstates, fetid marshes, stinking smokestacks and, on a clear day, a view of the beautiful Gotham skyline. Besides, as a venue, the stadium has a New York sensibility. The two teams that play there, the Jets and the Giants, have “NY” logos on their helmets, and their league’s front offices are in Manhattan. Think of MetLife as a giant aircraft from another planet. It may have landed in the swamps of Jersey, but it’s from New York.

In short, it’s about New York.

And so is the Super Bowl.

So let’s stipulate for the record that New Jersey isn’t really a place but a peculiar, if not delightful, state of mind that may well be the result of an inferiority complex and which is best expressed by the hyper, thin-skinned, in-your-face bombast of Chris Christie.

Now, if it pleases the court, I would like to call my first (and only) witness. He is James Cassella, the Republican mayor of East Rutherford, a borough of 8,978 citizens whose 4 square miles include the MetLife address.

Cassella is a nice man and a dedicated public servant who has been mayor for 19 years. He is paid $7,000 a year. His salary used to be $8,000, but he voluntarily took a $1,000 cut in pay. He also happens to be a lifelong football fan who once held season tickets for both the Jets and Giants.

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I believe his credentials are impeccable, and that he is truthful. So the question was put to him: Is the Super Bowl about New York or is it about New Jersey?

Cassella’s answer:

“Well, I believe that the NFL and Fox (TV) have made this probably a 99 percent New York event and somewhat left New Jersey out of the mix. I mean, they’re having some activities here — they have Media Day here, and the teams are practicing here — though they have no choice but to include New Jersey in that part of it.

“But as far as advertising for the Super Bowl and public relations, it’s really about New York, which I believed was going to happen from the day the Super Bowl was awarded to this area. I believed it was going to be a New York event.”

Anybody with any trace of sanity thinks it’s a New York event. But that’s the mayor of the host city saying it. He’s telling it like it is.

The mayor told me that a couple of years ago he had signed an agreement with the National Football League to allow Super Bowl banners to be put up in his town. Other mayors signed the same deal.

The banners were never put up.

“If you come into New Jersey, there’s nothing,” Cassella said. “You’d have no idea there was a game going on, as opposed to being in New York City and Broadway, where there’s big banners all over the place.”

The NFL claims that the big game will bring the region $600 million in revenue.

“I think they pulled that out of a hat,” Cassella said. “I’m not sure where they came up with it.”

At any rate, except for a small piece of the state’s hotel tax, Cassella didn’t expect East Rutherford to get any money out of the Super Bowl. And what money it does receive, he said, will likely be offset by the cost of overtime for his police department.

This week the beautiful people will be in Manhattan. That’s where the most lavish parties will be held. A 13-block stretch of Broadway has been transformed into Super Bowl Boulevard, a tourist-packed playground of concerts, outdoor games and even a seven-story toboggan slide. The Jersey towns will have a scattering of events that are modest by comparison.

East Rutherford is hosting a tailgate party on game day.

Cassella said he wasn’t complaining about East Rutherford being shut out. Nor was he particularly upset that he hasn’t been offered a chance to attend the Super Bowl.